Mr. Nolan awaited with at least a challenge a day

/ September 8, 2015
Those were the days.

Those were the days.

The kids go back to school today in my home New York state. Pull out the notebooks, pens, folders. You do still use notebooks, pens and folders in this digital age, students? Get ready for those butterflies in the stomach as you prepare to walk into a new classroom to be greeted by a different teacher, somebody who will rule how your weekdays will go until June. You do still get that feeling of what’s-up? inside of you, don’t you, young ones? You’ve changed these summer months, and you know it. Your friends from last year probably have gone through the same thing at home with their families. You are kind of wondering who you’ll end up hanging out with most this school year, aren’t you?

These things I think of as you head back this Tuesday because I stumbled across my sixth grade class picture on Facebook this weekend. My classmate Joe McCarthy sent me a message about the Mets, and I saw this in the photo section of his page. Had to swipe it, Joe. So many memories of our days in Northside Elementary School with Mr. Leo Nolan presiding over our sixth-grade class from September, 1968, to June, 1969.

Interesting that we both pursued careers in journalism. Maybe Mr. Nolan’s love of language at work there? Joe wrote.

Look at all of us in that picture. I was the skinny kid, glasses, last on the right. Dave Clark, biggest New York Rangers fan I knew, next to me. Ronald Charlie Brown, first bar mitzvah this Catholic boy ever attended, above me. What, did the photographer say All you boys with glasses stand over with Mr. Nolan to keep the glare in one place? But maybe we gravitated to that corner ourselves, aware of how wearing those glasses made us feel in stature to the rest of the class. Alas, the 46 Septembers that have come since have robbed me of that particular. I can recall how freeing it felt that couple of years later when my eye doctor declared enough, and told me my glasses-wearing days were done. And I wonder if irony is the right word as I have to pull on the progressives now to see the screen clearly enough to type this story.

I can still come up with the names to so many faces.

Lori Jacobson, blonde in the middle, girlfriend to Billy Euell, cool kid in our “advanced class,” opposite end of my row. Luke Heaton, great friend with a pool in his back yard, next to Charlie Brown, and Richard Daskin, always ready to play basketball on the public concrete court in the park behind my house, next to him. Joey, whose parents were always willing to set out an extra plate for me for a snack, top left.

We were all in this adventure with Mr. Nolan together. The school district called us the bright kids, and therefore we caught our share of crap from the other classes. Mr. Nolan knew this, and fought hard to make us proud of being smart. Every day, he brought a new excercise to the table. He made us master what he called mental math, multiplying and dividing without paper and pencil. I stink at math now, having thrown up my hands once letters were introduced in algebra in junior high, but in the sixth grade, wow. We subscribed to the New York Times, had it delivered to our desks each morning, and read the news together. This was the year we landed on the moon the summer after we left Mr. Nolan, but the lead-up was grand. He gave us all $1,000, told us to research and buy three stocks, and chart our wealth every day from the stock pages. Best of all, he listened and encouraged our sharing thoughts about our out-of-class interests, too, maintaining a well-rounded person was a happy person. Let’s Go Mets!

After we graduated from Mr. Nolan’s class, we all were swept into the seventh-through-12th Division High School, no more advanced class, left to navigate with thousands of kids daily.

I walked from our tiny tract house three miles to school each way. No, not uphill. Felt like it in the winter, though. I met lots of new people, but my friends from Mr. Nolan’s class, well, we still stuck together in the cafeteria.

But that summer, my father moved our family out east, to a leafier tract in Stony Brook, where I went to a junior high for two years, and then Ward Melville High School, and I rode a bus, and I made all new friends.

But when a round high school reunion year came around, the kids from Mr. Nolan’s class found me on Facebook, and included me in the loop, and made sure I was invited to the Division High School activities. I traded all sorts of notes and greetings. I didn’t go — to my Ward Melville reunion, either — but it was great when I discovered that Mr. Leo Nolan is alive and well and said he remembered us. Abby Levison, directly below me, shared photos of the ditto-machine class yearbook we’d made back in 1969.

Happy Back to School, students of 2015. May you find the Mr. Leo Nolan who leads you to the keys of knowledge and lasting connections that I discovered in sixth grade.

What was your favorite year in school, and why? Did you have a teacher that suddenly seemed different from the rest, and why? What’s your best and worst class pictures, and why?

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52 thoughts on “Mr. Nolan awaited with at least a challenge a day”

  1. Mr. Nolan was my favorite teacher in grade school. I remember how he also taught us how to fill out a federal income tax form 1040 !

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  2. What a nice tribute. So there was really a Charlie Brown, eh? My first thought was: in the way that 70s pics all look red, this pic looks aqua. The 60s must have been aqua. I must admit I’ve never seen a ditto machine.

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  3. May all children be safe, as they head off to school, Mark. I really like when people share class photos and this was a really sweet “send off” for school children and teachers alike.

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  4. How cute are you??? Not surprised that you were part of the advanced group, I walked one mile to school and remember the winter when I literally peed my snow pants because it was a long way home and there were 12 inches of snow on the sidewalk! LOL.

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  5. It’s hard to pick any one year (Other than fourth grade when I had the teacher from hell), but since you featured 6th grade, I’ll choose it. Also the “smart” class of the two 6th grade classes at soon-to-be-no-more Webster Elementary School. Led by, not Mr. Nolan, but Mr. Noeth. (pronounced Nayth). Eight boys and about 20 girls. We had a stereo to listen to during inside winter recess (Which our class raised the most money to “buy” at a school charity auction in 5th grade… we brought it with us). Mr. Noeth always kept a bag of Tootsie Rolls behind the desk which he’d throw out randomly at the class (So many ways a teacher could get sued for that nowadays). It’s also the only grade I ever made straight A’s in…

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    • Straight A’s, Tootsie Roll concussions and dancin’ to the Boom Box. No wonder you turned out the way you did, Bill. That explains the current cover countdown, I think. Good gawd, I hated this week’s No. 4, both fore and aft.

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  6. Great post!!! I took horrible school photos. I moved around so much. I think one of my favorite teachers was Mr. Lubway in 5th grade at the University of Chicago Lab Schools. I had just come back from Australia, where I had been attending a Boarding School, where we wore jodhpurs in the winter and wrote with fountain pens. With my Australian accent and red hair, I was definitely an oddity. But he made it okay. I have always been thankful to him for that.

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  9. oh, i love this, mark. my fav teacher was mrs. schultz, my 4th grade teacher who read ‘a wrinkle in time’ out loud to us each day, and i always looked forward to it. that’s really cool that you connected again – worst class pics where the ones when my mom would cut our bangs (super short) just the day before!

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  13. Some great memories for you-Terp! My favorite was 7th-Senior year. I graduated with a large class (642) our High school is 107 years old, still going strong and the only one on Beachside!!! My goal is to have each one of my 5 graduate there as I did-no easy feat as we are in the same County different school system however, My oldest brothers son goes there and I will use that address when the time comes!!! Yes got it figured out. We are talking about 20-25 minutes ride. The Gatorette!!!

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  14. Love this. Everyone looks much more formal than in my class photos. I’da had a crush on you, Mark — you look smart and funny!
    It’s really hard to pick a class I liked better, but maybe fifth grade with Mr. Leohr. He was my first ‘boy’ teacher and somehow he was a lot more strict while being a lot more fun. I don’t even remember how now, but he made math fun and we played eraser tag when the weather was too bad for proper recess.

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    • Why thank you, Joey. I think I would have returned your crush, and my reciprocation would have taken the form of the blush and hummmina hummmmina hummmmina stammer for at least the first week. 😉

      Mr. Leohr sounds great. Eraser tag AND making strict seem fun is pretty tricky.

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  16. School pictures are so much fun. Your memories sound pretty similar to mine. Elementary was pretty great but then I started getting bullied in junior high because I liked rock music. Thank goodness, by HS, they all started to grow up a bit.
    Yes, mental math is now part of a new curriculum recently introduced in the schools in CA (and maybe other states as well.)

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  17. Love this…such interesting timing, Mark. I just received a pic of a babysitting program that I and many of my 7th grade classmates graduated from in 1964. It was from the local newspaper and I’d never seen it before.

    What’s amazing to me at first glance is the clothing…dressed up for the photo, but at the time, we girls were forbidden to wear pants to school. What a contrast to just a few years later.

    We didn’t use the terms, but I was among the nerd/geek/braniac squad. Up until 8th grade, it was cool; in public school 9-12, not so socially acceptable…I think folks were a bit afraid of us, until they needed help with homework. ☺

    I had many inspiring teachers, like your Mr. Nolan. We were lucky.

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      • Catholic school for 8 years, academics were tantamount, and competition was never about athletics, only grades. They posted our class rank on the blackboard after every week’s exams…no lie. Ninth grade, I transferred to public school…very different atmosphere. I understand the label…moving did help my own kids to start fresh. ☺

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  18. My best year was 5th grade. I had a teacher that encouraged my writing and put me in the school play.I have never forgotten her kindness.

    High school still gives me butterflies at the thought!

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  20. What a great throwback. I still have all my school pics …somewhere in the deepest darkest corners of my attic *shudder* most of which, sported me with a bowl styled hair cut (yes, my mum used to cut my hair with the aid of a bowl!)

    At least you look relatively cool in yours! I mean, glasses our hipster these days! 😜

    Memories, eh!

    I hope you’re having a great week so far, my friend.

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  21. What a great photo and great post Mark. I am going back to school today- and even the assistant teachers get butterflies first day of school 🙂 Facebook reconnected me with loads of school friends and I have attended all my class reunions- even though I can’t say I have “fond memories” of high school!

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